


in the throes of a half sleep

by insistentbass



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-08
Updated: 2012-05-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:45:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insistentbass/pseuds/insistentbass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John wants to suck that upper lip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the throes of a half sleep

John wants to suck that upper lip.

It occurs to him - suddenly, in the throes of a half sleep that he is miles away from, that he is journeying through with blind eyes and shaking hands - that he would like to take that mountainous line of flesh and suck it. Take it between his teeth and bite it; run his wet and desperate tongue along the valleys and peaks and the words that lay hidden there, _whispering_ to him. 

And though he possesses the brain of a normal, standard human being - limited, enclosed, _you see but you do not observe_ \- he is not stupid. 

John knows, _very well_ , that he has had these thoughts before. Torrents of them, tidal waves, washing down on him and crashing and drawing back and pushing forward all over again, oceans and oceans and _around 70% of the Earth is water_.

He knows it well so it does not surprise him that, after ten months eleven days and four hours, he wakes up to a cold rush of air and white sheets bunched at his ankles. It does not surprise him that a name lingers in the beads of his sweat, curls at the lump in his throat as he swallows the remaining tendrils of a dream that never was.

He is only human.  He is only a man.

Oh, he could stop them. If he so desired, he could. John is a man of war after all, bred on discipline and hard lines. He could quell the anguish and the torment and the past. But he doesn’t, _he doesn’t_ , even though the cushions of his brain and his heart scream erase, erase, _erase me._

Needing to do something and wanting to do something are two entirely different things. They battle in his blood, hungry monsters and he does not know which to trust. He can’t decide which is best or right, so he takes the simpler option. And it is far easier to roll with this discorded unadulterated mess of shit than to force it into a cage.

John grabs a fistful of sheet and throws it back over his shoulders. He closes his eyes and his lashes stick together, mottled with dried thoughts and unrest. He attempts to occupy his head with trivia - his work at the clinic, his crappy flat, his rapidly deteriorating sex life, his near empty bank account, and doing something about his _quite raging_ hard on - but his neurons are carved with _Sherlock_.

He thinks Sherlock (cannot voice his name) and this time there are no lips, only hair; dark and dangerous, the curls of it morphing into the night sky and wrapping around the stars.

Sleep becomes him, eventually.

\-----

The day lasts too long. 

His patients barely look him in the eye and he doesn’t blame them. There is something akin to sympathy in the way they say good afternoon, with nods and fake smiles and _you’re sad and everyone knows it_.

Fuck them, he thinks.

Fuck everyone.

\-----

Sometimes he goes as far as to call it hate. It is, sometimes. It is hot and raw and bubbles in his gut like an untamed kettle, over boiled and ruined. It is in the whites of his knuckles as he clenches his fists against the cool leather of his all too strange and foreign and very wrong sofa. It is in his breath, uneven and wasted. It is in his hair and nails and skin and his unworn jumper and his tea, even _his god damn tea_ is weak and cold and ruined.

John lives like this for months and months and eventually, somewhere, it becomes normality and he accepts it with a smile that doesn’t belong to him.

Every spectrum of feeling has come and gone, leaving nothing but dust. He has been through the stages of grief once, twice and back for several helpings and it’s all very _text book_. In the dark his head swims, stroke after stroke in the wrong direction, questions and regrets and every time another note of detail plays through his head, an unanswered melody of strings that he cannot compose. 

John is a doctor and a soldier and so he copes, he survives. He is good at that.

Nothing shifts, it just settles.

\-----

Everything squeezes;

_constricts and implodes._

\-----


End file.
